Tag Archives: Saddam

A new United States Senate report issued by committee chairman Senator John Rockefeller blasted the Bush administration for lying to the American people in the spring of 2003. It emphasizes how Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld “undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (9/11) atacks to use the war against al-Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, representing to the American pepople that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single indistinguishable threat that was fundamentaly misleading and led the nation into war on false pretenses.”

There is nothing new in the report that has not previously been reported on numerous other occasions. Naturally, the White House has issued its normal response about the president being misled by faulty intelligence and he was simply a leader who was betrayed by his staff. As the years pass it is easy to allow reality to disappear into a maze of lies and and words. The bottom line is in March, 2003, a UN group was investigting charges of WMD and told President Bush they had yet to find any evidence such weapons actually existed. Bush insisted America had to act immediately or something terrible would happen. Any Middle Eastern expert knew there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda which was an enemy of the existing Iraq government.

Yes, there was faulty intelligence, but there was also accurate intelligence. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he hated al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group because he would never allow any outside force to gain power that might challenge his own.

Senator John McCain insists the Bush initiated war in Iraq has been a splended success in fostering principles of democracy. Asma Kadhim, an Iraqi woman, might beg to differ with the Arizona senator. She had a prosperous beauty parlor that enabled her during the Saddam Hussein era to have a car and money. But, within months after America overthrew Saddam, there came a knock on her door and a man delivered an envelope containing two bullets and a note which read: “If you do not close your beauty parlor, we will kill you.” She had no choice but to close it and now she remains at home, as do many other women who were actively engaged in business operations. She notes before America initiated the war, she “used to work in complete freedom.” Now, like so many educated Iraqi women, she is restricted to the home.

Women For Women International recently issued a report which said: “Present day Iraq is plagued by insecurity, a lack of infrastructure and controversial leadership, transforming the situation for women from one of relative autonomy and security before the war into a national crisis.” The crisis for women is not merely confined to Iraq, because even in stable and relatively free of violence Kurdistan, women do not have rights. During the past four months about 100 women committed suicide by burning themselves.

Senator McCain is so caught up in military solutions and defeating terrorists that he has lost sight of the human tragedy created by Bush and his supporters. They were so caught up in their own self-delusion as to completely ignore the rights of women or the impact of defeating secular forces.

Saddam Hussein told an FBI investigator that he initially miscalculated the response by Ameerica of his continual claims to posses weapons of mass destruction. He assumed the US would launch an aerial attack as it did in 1998 and, since “he survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.” He simply did not believe America would initiate a massive land invasion. On ce the invasion came, he assumed his generals could halt US forces for at least four weeks and then he assumed Iraq would resort to another approach about which he was not certain.

The important thing for Saddam was coming across as a strong defiant man. Unfortunately for him, he was confronting a man who had exactly the same mentality.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki indicated his nation is prepared to engage in serious discussions concerning the situation in Iraq if asked by the United States. “Iran will give a positive response to the request” and hoped such talks could take place in the near future. He expressed the hope of his nation that Iraq achieve stability and security for its people. Iran continues denying it is supplying arms to insurgents in Iraq.

The United States continues insisting that Iran wants Iraq to become destabilized. The American invasion of Iraq, which led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, was a great assistance to Iran which hated Saddam and longed for his removal from power. As the United States continues to make one blunder after another in the Middle East, Iran is the nation which stands the most to gain. Iranians and Iraqi Shiites share the same religion, they are allies in the fight against Sunnis so why should Iran want the Iraq government to collapse? It has been widely reported that neither Bush nor Cheney nor Rumsfeld had the slightest inkling about the split between Sunni and Shiite when they initiated the invasion that led to the overthrow of a Sunni led government and its replacement by a Shiite with close ties to Iran. An outside observer might conclude that George Bush is a secret agent intent on helping Iran to extend its power in the Middle East.

Iran will host the first international conference dealing with the impact of chemical weapons upon people. During the Iran-Iraq war which lasted from 1980-1988, it is estimated over 100,000 Iranians died due to the use by Saddam Hussein of chemical warfare. “Iran,” said Gholam Hossein Dehghani, “is one of the greatest victims of chemical weapons and no country in the world has suffered from the consequences of chemical weapons as Iran.”

There is little doubt the United States supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. The American press frequently cites evidence of the cruel use of chemical weapons on the people of Kurdistan, but there is scant mention of Saddam Hussein’s extensive use of chemical warfare in his fight against Iran. America aided Saddam in that war and one can only wonder if any American officials in the Reagan administration knew what was going on, but never protested.